Back in 2015 , The Witcher 3 was a Benchmark for any PC because it offers great visuals
that can stress any hardware and now CD PROJEKT RED released
a free "Next Gen Update" which takes advantage of newer Hardware
and provide plenty of visual enhancements such as Ray Tracing with 4 forms
RT Global Illumination , Shadows , Reflection and Ambient Occlusion and many other features
so today and as usual we will take a look at each graphical setting and figure out the combination to get the best performance and visuals
so without any further ado , let's get going Now before starting I want to address
some issues that this update bring with it first for some reason this update makes
the game heavy on the CPU like here and you'll notice sometimes
low GPU usage because of this this happens a lot with DX12
where at this scene we can see that it performs 25% worse than DX11
because of the low GPU Utilization also the game has a weird stuttering problems as you can see here , if you take
a look at the Frametime graph but let's kick off with Ray Tracing RT Global Illumination or RT GI
in this game is transformative it replace the original GI which
looks dated by today's standard and we can see more realistic lighting
with RT GI as light bounce around and transform the look of the game
but Enabling RT GI comes with huge performance impact around 68%
from OFF to ON on the RTX 3060 Ti The other RT options in the game don't
have that huge performance impact for example RT reflection going from OFF
to ON hit the performance by around 11% same thing with RT shadows which like
RT GI can also transform the look of foliage in particular
and cost around 5% similar story with RT Ambient Occlusion
here we see a low cost around 5% Now because RT GI is demanding and it's
necessary to enable other RT options I don't recommend using Ray
Tracing in this game yes it looks great but you'll need a very powerful PC and even with that I don't think
you'll get a smooth experience. in Anti Aliasing we have 3 regular options
with the addition of DLSS and FSR 2 now comparing the base options OFF , FXAA and TAAU
we can see as expected that TAAU clean the image with around 5% hit to performance
and if we compare TAAU , FSR and DLSS in quality mode
we can see at this scene that DLSS have less shimmering and
looks better compare to TAAU and FSR Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
helps ground objects in the scene and can only cost around 2 to 3% , so keep it ON Screen Space Reflection have
two options , Low and High and I really can't see any difference between them and going from Low to High cost nothing
So I recommend High here Now moving on to Depth Of Field ,
you'll see this effect a lot during conversations and cut scenes
and using it cost around 5% Light Shaft adds a lot to the game presentation
and thankfully using this setting doesn't cost anything
so I recommend keeping this one ON Nvidia Hairworks is a feature that
enhance Fur and Hair rendering using an advanced version of tessellation and it was quiet popular back in the day not only for it's quality but also for killing performance
here going from OFF to Geralt which as the name suggests apply Hairworks
only on Geralt model can cost around 9% and to ON which apply Hairwork
on any characters and animals like Roach here cost around 13%
and it can go up to 22% like here but keep in mind that this cost
depends on your GPU if you have an old GTX GPU it might cost more to use
and also it can kill your performance when there are many characters and animals on screen
that's why I recommend keeping this one OFF. Number of Background Characters determines
how many NPCs can be seen at the same time and it's specially noticeable
in big cites like Novigrad here performance wise going from Low
to Medium cost nothing , to High around 3% , Ultra around 7%
and to Ultra+ around 7.5% Here I think High looks fine
and it's the best option. Shadow Quality as usual adjusts the
resolution and quality of shadows in the game Performance wise going going
from low to Medium drop fps by 1% to High 4% , Ultra 7% and to Ultra+ around 10% Here IMO High is the best balance
between good performance and visuals The Terrain Quality setting
is not working correctly because I couldn't see any difference
between Low and Ultra+ as you can see here even the performance is
similar between the two options so set this one to Ultra Next we have Water Quality this one
controls water simulation effects like waves you can see here at medium and low there
are no waves unlike High , Ultra and Ultra+ performance wise I couldn't measure
any difference between all options but I recommend using High to stay on
the safe side during intense scenes Now we arrive at one of the most demanding
settings , Foliage Visibility Range it determines how far Grass and trees
are drawn in the distance like here when it comes to performance going from
low to medium cost 5% , to High 10% to Ultra and Ultra+ 16% here avoid Low because it doesn't
look good and use Medium Or High. Grass Density is another demanding setting this one adjusts the density
of ground foliage like here and it's demanding when using higher options
because going from low to medium cost 6% to high 12% , Ultra 19% and to Ultra+ 25%
Here Medium or High are the best options use Ultra only if you
have enough performance to spare. Now Vram wise the game is reasonable as we
can see here with Texture Quality at 1440p even at Ultra+ the game consume around 5.8GB but when using RT like here , you
can see that usage go up close to 8GB and as I always say , this one
depends on your GPU Vram , Settings but with 8GB GPU you should be fine
at 1440p or even higher without RT And the last setting we have is Detail
Quality which is similar to Terrain Quality doesn't change anything , it should control
the quality of Decals like blood and how far they are rendered
but I couldn't see any difference between Low and Ultra +
so keep this one on High as it might affect your performance during intense battles. So based on what we've seen so far , these are my recommended settings *Grass Density : Medium Or High now let's do a quick performance comparison
between Ultra+ preset and Optimized settings Optimized Ultra+ as you can see using the recommended settings
will grant you around 50% boost to performance with minimal impact to the visuals Now this next gen update for The Witcher 3
comes as a surprise and a disappointment IMO in one hand it bring with it a lot
enhancements not only visually but also to the gameplay and quality of life but on the other hand the technical issues ruins the surprise ,
from the bad DX12 implementation and CPU performance , to the heavy RT which I hoped they offer a lot of options for instead of ON and OFF and finally those annoying stuttering problems when tweaking settings Nvidia Hairworks
, Grass and foliage represent the most demanding settings in the game
and the source to get more performance. And we arrive at the end , Thank you so much for watching and for your time if you enjoyed the video leave a like , if not leave a dislike don't forget to SUBSCRIBE and hit the notification bell for any future videos and hopefully I'll see you in the next one.
